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Broshnat

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Everything posted by Broshnat

  1. The initial release and 1967 release were major "roadshow" releases in which the ticket prices were generally much higher than normal. I don't think there is any particular evidence that the ticket price was any higher than average during the other runs?
  2. Right, I've tried to assemble all of the various data from different sources and produced this: Rentals, Gross and estimated Admissions. The items in yellow are figures that are confirmed in some of the posts already in this thread and elsewhere. The years represent the re-release version rather than the year of gross which is important (and may be the source of a lot of the missing data). For example - the big release in 1967 was actually still showing through 68, 69, 70, 71 and the same would have been true of earlier releases. A lot of data conflicts (which isn't surprising given lack of accurate tracking etc) so I have often interpolated or estimated where there are gaps etc and tried to fit all of the data together so it works. Ticket prices have been averaged from various sources - the ones in green are the roadshow-dominated runs in which average prices would have been much higher. Let me know any thoughts - I get the total admissions to around 210m - which is in line with what has been used elsewhere and certainly more than the ~150m that some people try to estimate down to. Some of the sources used for this information: https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/gone-with-the-wind-1939/ https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/top-100-time-box-office-hits-1966/ https://www.filmsranked.com/box-office-record-history-domestic/ 1957: Top movies by rentals as of Dec 1959. As of Dec 1967 As of Dec 1969 As of Dec 1973
  3. This is just the initial release though in 1952. Gone with the Wind - 1952 - ¥190m - 3.46m Gone with the Wind - 1961 - ¥276m - 3.25mn Gone with the Wind - 1967 - ¥454m - 1.92mn Gone with the Wind - 1972 - ¥285m - 0.69mn So that is at least 9.3m admissions in Japan just in the four years that it was in the top 10 yearly chart.
  4. I understand supply and demand I just don't see how: It is relevant to a discussion about using admissions to compare box office performance as broadly the same supply and demand conditions apply now as they did 50 years ago. It is really that relevant at all in terms of how many people go to see a blockbuster movie. I saw Titanic 5 times back in 1998 and the amount of seats available, ticket price or any other kind of "movie industry structure" had no relevance - only how much I wanted to see the movie. And I would say the same is true of Endgame. Supply and demand curves in the traditional economic sense aren't really relevant to this argument as the price is basically fixed relative to income and the supply of available seats far outweighs the demand in all but the most extreme circumstances. If there was only one showing of a movie per day and relative ticket price was $100+ in one decade compared to thousands of showings and tickets at $1 in another decade then of course a direct comparison of admissions wouldn't be valid as the conditions are so drastically different - but that isn't really the case here.
  5. That is what you are implying. That the ticket price is affected by supply and demand curves - which really isn't the case. People will go and watch Endgame tonight because they want to - whether the ticket price was $8 or $10 I really don't think it would affect the number of people attending. Then, apart from the rare occasions when a screening is completely sold out, supply is effectively infinite. If you live anywhere in the world today and want to watch Endgame you can. Therefore, the amount of people who go to see the film today is pretty much solely a function of the demand for that movie - the number of screenings, amount of seats per screen, ticket price etc are all, within reason, largely irrelevant and the same was true 20 years ago with Titanic and 40 years ago with Jaws.
  6. So you are saying that a movie theatre will constantly change the admission price for each movie on an hourly basis based on the real time demand? Maybe it is different where I am but the ticket price at my local theatre is the same for every movie at every showing any time this week.
  7. Maybe I'm missing something here. Supply is essentially infinite - you can go into any movie theatre now and watch Endgame. So, assuming a constant ticket price (which is a fair assumption), the amount of tickets sold is proportional to the demand. As Barnack states above - ticket prices relative to income have been remarkably consistent over the years (even back to the 40s) and is also fairly consistent from country to country.
  8. I think you are just splitting hairs now to be honest to be awkward! Using admissions figures is basically "comparing to everything else released at the same time" but then also comparing that to what was released at other times using the most absolute measure that is available - that generally doesn't change much over time - ticket price. You seem to be hung up on the idea that ticket price relative to inflation has massively increased over the years, making people less likely now to see a movie because it is relatively "more expensive" - which isn't the case.
  9. It's dumb because it proves my point? Jaws was a phenomena as you say and the admissions figures support that while the absolute gross doesn't because ticket prices are now, on average, nearly 5 times more. Only if the price is wildly different, which it isn't in relative terms. Tickets prices vs inflation are not that far out. Average ticket price in 1975 was $2.05. Via inflation, that is equivalent to $9.57 in 2018. Average ticket price in 2018 was $9.11. I don't think I'd have been any more or less likely in 1975 to see a movie at an equivalent price of $9.57 than I would last year at $9.11 so I would certainly be happy with the assumption that more tickets sold = more popular. I don't agree as highlighted above. See point 3 - in fact tickets were relatively more expensive in 1975 than they are now. Admissions takes out the ER issues in adjusting worldwide numbers. I know there is no way to prove this last point, it is just a gut feeling based on many years of research and analysis.
  10. I'm merely stating which movie sold the most tickets and was therefore "more popular". I'm not sure I really get your point. We are on a box office forum and people like to compare the box office figures of one film to another. The standard way to do this (in the USA primarily) is based on US$ gross - which is reasonable when comparing one film to another released within a couple of years but due to inflation falls down when comparing over longer periods. Most of Europe reports admissions and has all-time charts based on admissions, as does a number of other regions. In your original reply, you stated that comparing the box office performance based on admissions is an "even poorer" way of doing it - I assume you mean even poorer than comparing the dollar gross and I really don't understand how anybody could come to that conclusion. In 1975, Jaws sold 125m tickets in North America at ~$2 per ticket and grossed $260m. In 2018, Deadpool 2 sold 35m tickets in NA at ~$9 per ticket to gross $320m. Are you saying that comparing the popularity of the two movies based on their dollar gross makes more sense than admissions? The point about comparing movies released in the same timeframe is that any type of comparison will have its flaws! There are even variables here that make a direct comparison difficult - time of year the movie was released (summer, Christmas etc), competition from other movies released at the same time, 3D / Imax / matinee showings affecting ticket prices, ER fluctuations (which can be huge even over a few months, especially in Latin American countries) and so on. Plus simply how much marketing the distributor has done and how effective it was. Especially in modern times, a movie will live or die on the opening weekend so it is all about marketing and promotion. In decades gone by, a movie could do well over many months or even years due to good word of mouth. The overall point here is that you could argue that comparing the US$ box office of two movies released 6 months apart isn't a completely apples to apples comparison in terms of absolute popularity either. Comparing over larger timeframes - I'm not saying that admissions is a perfectly representative comparison that has no issues but it is the best we will ever have and many times more informative than just comparing the US$ gross. The point about cancelling out is that there are plenty of arguments for and against but I do feel that overall it seems to balance out quite well. Had Titanic been released in 1940 it probably wouldn't have sold as many tickets on the initial run (as the US population for example was 130m vs 273m in 1997) and it would have been over a couple of years rather than 6 months. The movie would likely have been re-released multiple times and built up a gross over a number of decades. I don't believe the total admissions would be much different to the 135m it is on now. Likewise if the movie had been released in 1970, 1980 or now - I think overall it would have ended up around the same place - just a different route to get there.
  11. Even more poor than what? If anybody would like to compare films from different time periods (and as you say there are flaws in doing so) - I don't see a better way than adding up how many people went to see that movie. Most arguments tend to cancel out - people like to ignore GWTW as it was re-released over 50 years in the days before video and that seems somehow "unfair" but to counter that - the population in the USA in 1939 was less than half of what it is now and some of the re-releases (such as the big one in 1967) consisted of a major re-master of the film to 70mm. Recent movies such as Lion King, Titanic and Jurassic Park have had fairly successful re-releases due to 3D or anniversaries, despite the availability on DVD, BluRay, Netflix etc - in some ways I'd say that drawing people back into a cinema 20-30 years later to spend another $5-10 to watch an old film is a hell of an achievement. As is clear in the table - modern films benefit enormously from admissions in Asia and Latin America compared to 20+ years ago but again there is no method to really account for this - if you take the gross or adjusted gross you have the same issue but also add into the mix exchange rate fluctuations and local inflation differences which add further complexity. Admissions, to some extent, normalises these things. Any comparison will be flawed - even between two movies released this year as they appeal to different markets, different age groups, different ticket prices, release windows and so on! I guess we just have the make the best of what we have and try to make the fairest comparisons we can. Such is the nature of box office analysis.
  12. I have China in there (CN about halfway across) but am in the process of adding India as it is the next largest market currently missing on there. Clearly there are a lot of smaller markets missing which will help to round everything out if that information ever becomes available.
  13. Well I like to use admissions as the fairest method to compare movies across the last 100 years - no method is perfect but it takes care of things like exchange rates and ticket price inflation.
  14. This is about as definitive a list as I can find anywhere: YEAR RELEASE TICKETS 1939 First Run 1 11 61.521.739 1941 Re-Issue 1 5 23.000.000 1942 Re-Issue 4 5.629.630 1947 Re-Issue 5 20.080.000 1954 Re-Issue 2 23.426.667 1961 Re-Issue 1 2 19.420.290 1967 Re-Issue 1 10 48.701.667 1974 Re-Issue 3 7.785.027 1989 Re-Issue 605.369 1998 Re-Issue 1.439.256 Total: 211.609.645
  15. Is the ticket price much higher for Endgame than the Furious movies then?
  16. Hi everyone. I'm trying to gather as much all-time admissions data as I can from the main regions around the world. Argentina is one of those countries in which I have yet to be able to find a definitive list of the all-time top movies by admissions. IMDB archives has data for some old movies but again there are blanks: https://web.archive.org/web/20170307230543/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059742/business https://web.archive.org/web/20040623201939/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068646/business Data I have managed to assemble so far for Argentina for pre 1995 movies: 3.97m - Home Alone 3.72m - The Godfather 3.65m - The Sound of Music 1.87m - Snow White 1.86m - The Lion King 1.79m - The Jungle Book 1.02m - The Exorcist Does anybody have access to a comprehensive list that they could share?
  17. Infinity war is all about Thanos - you follow most of the movie through his eyes and connect with him as a character. That is why the movie is so different and groundbreaking. Even though you have invested so much time with all of the heroes, by the end of the film you almost want Thanos to win because he is such a compelling character who believes that what he is doing is for the greater good of the universe and even makes his own sacrifices to achieve his goal. He is relentless and determined and by the end of the movie you are almost willing him on to collect the final couple of stones - which he does. If you watch the movie from his point of view then it is a proper ending and a satisfying (although hollow) one.
  18. Yes I have seen that list - shame there is nothing from pre 1996?
  19. Hi everyone This is a work-in-progress thread - I am attempting to collect a list of the top movies of all-time globally based on admissions but as you can imagine there are a lot of gaps! I wanted to share my progress so far and ask for help in filling in some of the blanks. I have focused on the major regions to begin with and would like to start on others such as the rest of Europe, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Chile and so on.
  20. Can you PM me? I am trying to assemble a list of the top movies worldwide by admissions so the data would come in very useful..
  21. Yes when comparing movies, I always prefer to look at admissions as I think it is a fairest comparison as you take out the influence of exchange rates and inflation. I have never seen any older admissions data for Mexico. I know that Jaws, for example, is listed as having 13m admissions in Brazil and Titanic 17.7m and assumed that the figures in Mexico would have been similar.
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